Once you go metal...

Up until about a year ago, I had a very casual relationship with metal--a handful of classic records in my collection with some oddities scattered about (e.g., Voivod's Dimension Hatross). I suppose it was having Iron Maiden click with me one day that set me on this path, but it has gotten to a point where probably 80% of what I'm listening to these days is metal. Part of it is undoubtedly just the thrill of discovering an entirely new genre with decades' worth of classics and favorites to explore, and a whole wealth of sub-genres. But part of it seems to be specific to metal; I get the impression, perhaps falsely, that a lot of people into metal listen nearly exclusively to metal. There may not be a ton of folks who fit that description on a board like ILM, but for those of you who do listen to tons of different things, how much of your listening is metal? And how accurate do you think the stereotype of the only-metal listener is?

i listen to metal but it's probably like <5% of my listening overall. in my experience there's no 'metal-only' people; metal fans also listen to lots of hard rock and prog at the least.

Hmmm, probably about 25% of my listening is metal. I'm perfectly happy with the most accessible couple of acts from each sub-genre that interests me, and a handful of the genre-straddling titans. If I were to dig too deep i feel I might never emerge, and I like listening to other kinds of music too.

Can't give an at all authoritative answer to your second question, but I do suspect there's a silent majority of metal fans with healthily broad listening habits. The ones above sixteen, anyway.

I don't listen to that much metal myself, but in my personal experience there are no metal-only listeners. Like at the very least they'll also be really into classical music.

Yeah, I'm definitely still in a stage of discovering the most canonical and well-regarded acts in each sub-genre, and trying to figure out which sub-genres connect with me the most. I'm sure the degree to which my listening is metal-centric right now has a lot to do with how early in this exploration I still am, but there's so much out there, and as it is now I feel like I'm already discovering like 1-2 new amazing bands a week.

Biggest metal fan I know is also a big Mountain Goats fan.

The volume of metal being made seems to only be rivaled by wanky electronic music. Luckily I am a fan of both.

pretty sure rap rivals either in volume

Oh yeah good point. I am very much a surface dweller when it comes to rap.

I've tried getting into metal several times, but I think I'm just approaching it from the wrong angle. Like I'm jumping in the deep end when there are probably some more "transitional" artists I should be trying first. I'm glad you mentioned Iron Maiden; they're a group I'm only vaguely familiar with but I feel like they might be more what I need to hear right now. But I'll totally fall for a review of e.g. Darkthrone or Paysage d'Hiver and then just not get it at all. Vocals are the main dealbreaker for me at this point, though.

Maybe an obvious thing to say, but have you tried Ride the Lightning or Master of Puppets?

Yeah, didn't really get either of them.

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Oof, yeah, I'd imagine Darkthrone is a pretty tough starting point unless you're really into, say, hardcore punk (?). I do love them, but it took some effort. Yep, black metal and death metal vocals can be a stumbling block for sure. You should definitely try more vocal-oriented stuff first... Maybe check out Killers or Piece of Mind by Iron Maiden. I mean, have you listened much to the uber-canonical stuff like Priest and Sabbath? Those were both bands I loved before I really started digging. More doom-y or stoner-y stuff might also be a nice jumping off point. If you like riffage in any way, check out, say, Holy Mountain by Sleep or Blues for a Red Sun by Kyuss...

I hate James Hetfield's voice!

If you're intrigued by the atmospherics of black metal but find the harshness off-putting (a similar position to myself!), Agalloch may be a good starting point, particularly Ashes Against the Grain.

Yeah, the stuff I really love that makes me want to explore further is stuff like Sabbath, Rainbow, and Judas Priest. Also really like a lot of stuff that might be considered "proto metal" like Groundhogs and Deep Purple. I will have to look into Sleep and Kyuss, definitely.

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storm of the light's bane by dissection was the record that got black metal to click for me i think

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Ah, given the other bands you name, I think you'll dig...

xp Agalloch, too...see these are all bands that I've at least heard of, so it's sorta my fault for skipping past them! :)

Thanks for all the recommendations, guys. Sorry for the slight thread derail!

storm of the light's bane by dissection was the record that got black metal to click for me i think

― ciderpress, Friday, October 12, 2012 9:58 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It was actually Transilvanian Hunger by Darkthrone for me... That Dissection album is on my to-check-out short list.

No need to apologize on the derail! I've also found metal fans to generally be ultra-enthusiastic and always willing to share recommendations... Something else I really like about it.

The metal dudes on ILX are some of the friendliest guys on the board.

Everyone I know irl who loves metal is lovely, I just can't listen to it without laughing and turning it off.

That's almost what happened the first time I listened to Iron Maiden... But then one day I found myself laughing and turning it UP... Then I realized it was some of the most life-affirming and exuberant music I'd ever heard in my life!

my listening = maybe 20% metal?

metal ppl listening exclusively to metal seems like a recognisable thing, if not necc. an overwhelmingly accurate one. I think you could theoretically listen to nothing but metal and still have a reasonably wide listening palette, albeit a culturally narrow one maybe. also ILM talks about "indie guilt" quite a bit but "metal guilt" doesn't ring any bells for me

I listen to Mastodon's Leviathan lots. don't think I own any other metal albums to be honest.

xp lol one result

i'm really coming around to CKY...

SEARCH

96 quite bitter beings
disengage the stimulator

if this is nu-metal guilt, then let it be my scarlet fux0ring letter.

― gygax!, Monday, 18 November 2002 19:48 (9 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Probably 30-40% metal these days (much to my wife's dismay). Except in brief obsessive periods where I listened to like nothing but one genre exclusively (jungle, reggae, dancehall, folk or whatever) my metal listening has mostly been at least 10-20%, I'd say, although rarely more 50% (see wife again.)

i've had a 20 year love affair with metal going on and i don't think my enthusiasm for it has ever really subsided. it's just that i probably have less time to devote to it now that i've developed so many other infatuations with other kinds of music. within the metal spectrum nothing is too intense or full on for me -- in fact, the more organic or unhinged something sounds, the more i'm able to connect with it and have a genuine reaction. Transilvanian Hunger is a good example of that. Storm of the Light's Bane is actually one of my very favourite albums, and while it's extremely catchy and immediate, i've always appreciated how atmospheric and one-of-a-kind it sounds.

Biggest metal fan I know is also The Mountain Goats.

Haha, I was gonna say!

My metal education has been, by and large, reading lots of various threads on here and checking stuff out... AG's metal poll has been a treasure trove...

Metal probably makes up around 5% of my listening, increasing to 10-15% at times. I think there's a natural crossover between metal and the kind of energetic chart pop that makes up the bulk of the music i listen to. Both tend to push towards extremes.

Started out as a metalhead in the eighties and listened to it exclusively for 6 years straight (it was a divided time that also somehow seemed to demand that; or at least I thought it did). Left the genre for dead for many years after that, only to return to it in the early 2000's. Have been hooked again ever since, and it probably makes up 50% to 60% of what I listen to nowadays; using a broad definition of the term (so 1960s and 1970s hard rock are included too, and so is punk/hardcore).

My metal listening has ebbed and flowed. A little Sabbath and Led Zep as a kid (2%), a lotta Iron Maiden and some Def Lep, Judas Priest and Motorhead (10%), some hair metal which I got sick of, so pretty much only Metallica from 86-88 (under 1%), then got into Slayer, Terrorizer, Bolt Thrower, Sepultura, Napalm Death and others around 89-90 (13%), didn't keep up with it too much in the 90s until I got interested in Entombed, Opeth, Enslaved and others at the end of the decade (10%), upped to over 20% when I did this piece on metal in 2005 then drifted into stoner/doom/psych, which currently takes up at least half of my listening time.

I do feel the exclusive metal head is mainly something from the past. Even if it seems people are almost exclusive, there is usually some Swans/Godflesh or Diamanda Galas/Dead Can Dance in there. Or noise from Merzbow and the like. Or seventies stuff like Pink Floyd/King Crimson. Or, worst case scenario: Apocalyptica.

I feel that this exclusivity mainly dates back from the eighties, when music lovers and genres seemed more divided. I do not really know where this form of oppression originated from. Probably the punk movement, which seemed to take the mindset of the alternative press by storm. What i do know is that I, and my fellow metalheads, all had our secret music collection next to our public one and that the hidden one contained the pop chart hits you really liked but weren't allowed to admit. Silly days.

Haha yeah, I remember having to be a bit clandestine about my fondness for Portishead's first album and Parklife back in the mid 90s.

My relationship with metal is a strange, complicated one. She's like someone I used to see around but took me a while to understand. Once that was over I found her allure intoxicating. we dated a few months but ultimately found we weren't quite as compatible as we once thought. We still bump into each other on occasion, maybe at the right kind of party and get on like a house on fire, an encounter that invariably leads to loud passionate sex in a bathroom somewhere and while it's happening I think 'why be with anyone else? Why oh why?', but the next day we're just surly with each other and agree to part ways, until next time.

It doesn't help that my current friendship group don't really approve of her, but the group Who introduced me to her also got me into Tom Waits, the Beach Boys and Aphex so I can't argue

I approve of and identify with this analogy

What I do know about the people that are (still) almost exclusive about metal is that they (rightfully) claim that the genre is so wide that it can bring them anything they look for. There collections run from bluesy and mellow stuff to extremely abrasive recordings, from aggressive to comical and from slow to hyper speed. As a catch all phrase, metal is one of the most diverse genres out there.

Of course you also have the folks that only collect true black metal or old school death metal or grind core. They have every right to do so, of course, but it is not something I can understand anyone doing who left his teen years behind. That is such a limited scope. Though it's true that within these genre limitations yet again lots of diversity can be found.

i had a phase in high school where i was listening to mostly metal, and even though i was interested in other genres they had to come with a "-metal" suffix. eventually i realized i was allowed to actually listen to other kinds of music without a metal filter and never really looked back since.

xp, appropriately

But if diversity is something you value and actively seek out I don't get why you would limit yourself to one genre (even a mega-genre like metal).

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Jordan, that ties into something else I was wondering: how many people have a metal "phase" and never really come back to it? (Is this what you're saying happened with you?) Seems metal, once discovered, stays in most people's diets... Again, this is pure conjecture and wondering.

I rejected metal for about five years in my twenties. It was a necessary phase.

yeah, never really came back to it in any serious way, i just listen to the first five Metallica records every so often, and maybe throw in Edge of Sanity or Paradise Lost once a year.

That's interesting. I think I probably came to metal a little late in life given much of the other music I've liked for so long. Dog latin, nice analogy; for me, it's like I'd been living on an island where things were overall pretty chill and interesting, but then one day I tripped on a loose stone that turned out to open a secret passageway to an underground lair filled with an unimaginable variety of gorgeous women, all of whom turn out to have many sisters in other lairs.

I'm fairly new to metal too, and eager to hear as much as I can. The bands that really got me hooked are Blind Guardian and Iron Maiden. Big uplifting choruses, martial lyrics, bombastic vocals. I love this stuff.

i mean yeah, i listen to 50% fucked up shit and 50% old person music, so idk, 20% metal maybe? not as much trad metal as batshit crazy person metal i guess, and i have taken brief vacations from metal metal over the years, but normally for stuff like pigfuck or nurse with wound or foetus, so i never feel like i have really strayed that far away, even when i wasn't steeped in real metal per se. i mostly hate modern canon stuff, like you can cram that pantera/lamb of god groove metal shit, so in some ways i guess i stand a little outside of the group that would be constant metal listeners anyway, but i have def gone through periods of listening to nothing but ulver or belphegor or harvey milk for weeks. it really is an amazing genre, and if i had to pick one genre (heh self-defined, so i still get to listen to witch mountain or today is the day or cromagnon) to listen to forever i guess it would be a three way tossup between metal or first wave acoustic blues or 50's pop. and i think i would be happy with any of those three.

I never really listened to much metal growing up, though I sure heard a lot. So when I finally did get around to stuff like Maiden and Priest decades later, it was both familiar and awesomely fresh. Sort of like stumbling across a cache of cool comic books.

not as much trad metal as batshit crazy person metal i guess

So a lot of Megadeth, I take it?

I am an interloper, I only ever listen to Boris occasionally (and Isis even less so) these days, even though Metallica were the first CDs I ever bought.